Sales Training Drivers

Back to School, Back to Basics

Despite the impassioned pleas by millions of children across the nation, it’s that time again. School is back in session. Even though they may never admit it, children are actually excited about the upcoming school year. Every year brings a new range of possibilities. Yet before they do anything else, they must do one thing: go back to basics.

As adults, we may forget the amount of time that we spent at the beginning of every school year reviewing what we had already learned. Sometimes, it was just a simple review. Other times though, that second chance at learning was just what we needed to understand the topic at hand.

In the spirit of going back to school, here are five “back to basics” lessons for sales trainers from some of our Sales Training textbooks.

Beat Back Sales Training Apathy

The inevitable has happened. As you’ve been training your salespeople, it’s crept in slowly but surely. A yawn here, a daydream there. Before you know it, everyone within a one mile radius has a thousand yard stare. Worst of all: it’s happening to you too!

Sales training apathy can get the best of anyone, sales trainer and salesperson alike. Here are some practical and effective ways to beat back that glazed look and get back to being focused.

5 Lessons on How to Sell in This New Economy

1) More activity does not equal Better Activity. Quality always beats out quantity.  – John Golden, Huthwaite

When times are tough, you’ll always feel better if you’re burying yourself in work. What you need to be sure of though, is that the work you’re doing is productive and not just a good way to “look busy.” In terms of lead generation, making 500 cold calls instead of 100 doesn’t mean that you’ll instantly do more business. Put your energy towards calling referrals if you can, or use that energy for something else besides generating a higher phone bill.

2) Make sure you give some attention to your high performers; now is not the time that you want to lose them. – Richard Dickerson, The Brooks Group

Your high performers are what propel your business forward and, whether you want to admit it or not, help keep you afloat in rough economic waters.  However, High performers know that they’re high performers; they also know that if they wanted to, they could probably perform just as well somewhere else. To keep their minds (and bodies) from wandering right out of your company, be sure to give them plenty of attention and incentives for staying with your business.

Developing High Performing Sales Teams: focus on the winners or weed out the failures?

We caught up with Howard Stevens after his keynote presentation that kicked-off our online-only conference last week. In his speech Howard offered some insight that many of us might find to be counter-intuitive. He said:

It feels logical to focus on the winners, but it is actually more successful when managers focus on weeding out the failures.”

We asked if Howard could elaborate and he followed-up with four main points to remember when you are evaluating your sales teams and considering your training and development options:

1. Someone who is an “average” professional salesperson…who usually makes quota, who almost always takes good care of customers, etc. will always make his company solid profits. There are quite a few of this kind of salesperson for you to choose from when building your sales team.
2. The superstars are rare. There aren’t enough to go around. Even the Yankees can’t buy enough of the superstars to fill every position. So it is more profitable to start today with a good solid performer that will make the company money, than to leave the business unsold while you are waiting to find the rare superstar.
3. Superstars are always at risk, they are more visible and attractive to the competition who just make them “an offer they can’t refuse.” If your superstar moves on they will take their training experience and even, potentially, some of their customers with them. For example, many of the top Las Vegas acts will not hire performers who are too talented because they are too hard to replace… as well as too expensive to maintain.

So, as you go through the process of evaluating, developing and maintaining your sales force, remember to focus on weeding out the lowest performing salespeople rather than constantly rewarding your superstars. Build an average team and you will do better overtime than if you constantly struggled to maintain a team of superstars.

If you’re looking for more insights on the critical steps to developing high performing sales teams, be sure to register for our online, on-demand conference available now through Wednesday, July 28.

Howard Stevens, founder, chairman and CEO of HR Chally Group, a talent management, leadership development, and sales improvement corporation providing personnel assessment and research services to more than 2, 500 customers in 35 countries  for over 33 years.

On-Demand Conference on Developing High Performing Sales Teams Now Available

What do Forrester Research, IBM and ADP have in common? Their sales training leaders and other experts from 10 top-performing companies are sharing their insight and knowledge with you at our online-only conference this week.

We kicked off the event yesterday afternoon with a live keynote presentation from Howard Stevens of HR Chally. In his presentation, titled “Processes of World-Class Sales Teams: Critical Steps to Improve Your Sales Results,” Stevens shared with us his thoughts on how sales team managers can be more efficient and data-driven in order to operate at a c-suite level and save their teams and budgets in today’s economy. “Today, the c-suite wants strategic partners,” Stevens said. “Sales team managers need to focus on the metrics and provide accurate inventories of talent available versus talent needed. They must also develop concrete plans to close the gaps.”